Knit Happy!
It’s late, especially today, but I just wanted to share this before bed:
Knit Happy mug
I got this adorable mug from Knitting Today earlier this week. In fact, I got several of them. They come in six colors, and of course I picked purple to show you. I don’t plan on using the mug for tea; I plan on keeping one on my desk at home, one on my desk at work, and giving the other three as gifts. The little sheep is adorable, and I love the saying on the front, “Knit Happy.”
The ironic thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve been knitting happy at all lately. I’m surrounded by yarn and a plethora of patterns and books, and everything is all neat and organized and I can actually see what I’ve got now. Except that now that it’s all neatly put away it’s like I don’t want to touch it. I wish I could just dump all my yarn out all around me and go diving for something fun. While I’m great at making the kind of mess something like that would involve, I’m not so good at putting it all away without help. So in the boxes it stays, and at times I think I forget what I have.
Maybe I should bite the bullet and go to my trusty box of Cascade 220, and ball up some yarn and knit a hat. Hats used to make me knit happy. But you know what? I haven’t made a hat in a looong time. Maybe that’s the cure. The hat I’m dying to make most is Vivian, by Lisa Cruse. The showier, the better. Big hat, huge flowers.
Or, cables? I have a fabulous pattern for a cabled scarf that came with some cashmere I bought at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The cable pattern looks pretty complex, so I told myself I should practice it on something else before tackling the cashmere.
Or, Girasole? I know I mention that project a lot. But one advantage to that one is that the alpaca yarn I have for it is right behind me in my active projects bin, waiting. Maybe I should just cast on for that.
Tomorrow is an interim meeting of my knitting group. Our official meeting isn’t until September 12, but lots of folks have been itching to get together and knit. I’m going, and I guess I better decide by tomorrow what I’m going to knit.
Wish me luck deciding! I’ll check back in tomorrow.
But I Already Know How…
Today I received the Learn to Knit Kit from Knit Picks. It is fabulous! If you know someone who wants to learn, do consider getting this as a gift! The kits comes with three hanks of Wool of the Andes Bulky, in coordinating colors, size 10 Harmony straight needles, and the most fabulously complete knitting instructions I have ever seen in any Learn to Knit Kit of its sort.
I thought sure I’d get them with the very first step. No way would they have instructions on how to wind the hanks of yarn into a ball in the booklet. But they did! It really looks like they thought of every detail to get a new knitter on his or her way.
The kit includes instructions for a hat and scarf, including how-to’s for several different techniques, from stitches to decreases to finishing. Maybe even I’ll learn how to do mattress stitch yet! God knows Lea-Ann tried to teach me (over the phone!) years ago, and more recently, my good buddy L. showed me. In person. I’m still pretty bad at it, but I think I get the idea. Having the booklet with the explanations will help.
It also has a section in the booklet on fixing mistakes! How cool is that? Knitting mistakes even happen to experienced knitters, as we know, but it is often those mistakes that will cause the new knitter to throw the needles across the room and give up. The detailed pictures and reassuring writing style throughout this whole kit are about as close to having a real knitting teacher sitting next to you as any booklet could be. Overall I think this kit is exceedingly well done!
But wait! There’s more:
Digital Scale
Last week I complained that I needed to be able to split my yarn hanks into two balls each to work on a shawl project. I had seen this scale for a while on the Knit Picks site . It’s also available on Amazon,
Finally, I have to share the funniest kitten video I have seen in a long time:
YouTube Yummies
Not much knitting happening here, so I thought I would share a couple of really cool things I found on YouTube this week.
The first is 12-year-old singer, Abby Miller, of Virginia. She’s been making the local press here this week because of a fundraising video/PSA she created to help a 4-year-old girl with neuroblastoma. Check out this amazing young singer:
Abby has been featured on the TV news and in the Washington Post this week, and when I checked out her YouTube page, I was amazed! Enjoy!
Next is a new videocast by Carin, AKA, Alcariel, who gained podcasting experience by guesting from time to time on another podcast, which I won’t mention, but the knitters all know which one it is. It’s called Round the Twist, and here’s a sample episode:
I hope Carin doesn’t mind me posting this to her blog, but the “embed” feature on YouTube makes it handy, and I told her I’d help to promote her new adventure. Check it out!
As for me, I’m still in the knitting doldrums, and I don’t know why! Sigh. I just need to cast on something new and be done with it. Once again I’ve knit about 5 rows all week. On a scarf. Where is my mojo?
Sigh…
The Dog Days of Summer
August 20, 2009 by
Filed under Knitting, Project Progress, blog
This has been the longest knitting slump ever. All summer, I’ve been knitting this:
Pink scarf in progress
It’s a pink scarf for my friend Jen, that I was hoping to have done in time for her visit IN MAY. So much for that! I take the scarf with me absolutely everywhere, but over the last few weeks it’s only made it out of my bag a few times. I took it with me to dinner at the pool tonight, and I got THREE WHOLE ROWS done. Whoop-dee-do. I really need to find my mojo and get this project done! I had such good intentions. Don’t I always?
The sad truth is that my UFO pile is at least three times bigger than the pile of things I’ve actually finished. This has me wondering at times if I even like to knit! Oh, I know I do like knitting, but am I passionately in love with it? I don’t know. Probably not at the moment. I need to find a project that really excites me and makes me want to finish it. Heck, some projects even have road blocks to getting started! Such as:
- The Lace Yarn Sampler Shawl from Knit Picks. It’s even purple, people! My most favorite color. What’s stopping me? It’s knit on two strands of each yarn throughout, so you can drop one and add another color, one at a time. So it blends nicely. Cool idea! Except I don’t have a yarn scale and the idea of winding two little balls out of each hank seems like a pain in the butt. Stupid, huh?
- The Girasole Blanket by Jared Flood. I got some beautiful Eco-Alpaca to knit this in. It is SO soft, and so pretty,and I got it on a discount! But that ball winding thing again is getting in my way. Why oh why do I find ball winding to be a chore? Because my kitchen table is always a cluttered mess, that’s why. I seldom have enough room anywhere for my swift and ball winder to be set up. Sigh…
- The Tam of Doom. I don’t know why I call it that. But I never got past the cast on before having to frog. I’m trying to learn Tubular Cast On and I messed up. I will get back to this…someday.
- My conscience. This is my biggest roadblock of all. I have so many UFOs, so, so many, that really, honestly? I have no business starting something new. There’s a pink scarf to finish after all, and my February Lady Sweater, and let’s not even talk about last year’s abandoned afghan. It was for a sick co-worker. The co-worker is well now, thank goodness, and the afghan is just mocking me. It’s in my active project bin, snickering. Can you hear it?
Sigh.
Why I’m Not Meant to Do Tubular Cast On
August 15, 2009 by Trish
Filed under Knitting, Project Progress, blog
See this?
Live knit stitch hanging loose
Sometimes I wish my camera wasn’t so good at closeup photography. What you’re looking at is clear evidence as to why I should stay away from tubular cast on with small needles and fingering weight yarn. When joining the knit stitches with the live stitches in the waste yarn, I missed a few. They were SO tiny from being pulled and tugged that once in a while they got impossible to see. And I tried to think of a way to fudge and fix it, but I can’t. I’m sure there might be a way, but I think the safest thing to do at this point is to frog and go with a different cast on. Thank goodness I have the A Knitting Glossary
So, my summer of knitting frustration and general slumpiness continues. Hopefully, things will get better soon. Until then I think I’m going to call it a night. Perhaps a fresh outlook and some sleep will do the knitting some good.
